


This Time It Wasn’t the End

by harborshore



Series: This Time It Wasn't the End [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/pseuds/harborshore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes is found alive and Natasha gets her best friend back, slowly. </p><p>A story about recovery and love. And guns. And fighting your way back out of hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Time It Wasn’t the End

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from “Breath of Life” by Florence and the Machine. Thanks to torakowalski and soemily for stellar betas on very short notice, and to inner_voice for REALLY fantastic art. [LOOK IT'S LOVELY](http://archiveofourown.org/works/562929). I love it SO MUCH.

Natasha isn’t called in when they find James Barnes. It stands to reason; she’s half a world away and his childhood friend is living in SHIELD’s headquarters. 

She was also deemed too invested to be part of the extraction mission in the first place, given their shared past and all the remnants of the Red Room conditioning left in them both. Natasha has been free of brainwashing for years and years, entirely her own woman now, but SHIELD still worries about their asset. They got the triggers and anti-triggers from her, the ways of getting someone out from their conditioning that she stole from the Project X files before she took off, and she gave them what she could on James without betraying him too badly. She didn’t think they would succeed, and she was going to go after him herself the second she got reliable intel.

But then New York happened, and Natasha was distracted. And then Clint shook her awake, on a bright, bright morning two weeks after Manhattan was torn up by aliens, and told her that no, Phil didn’t die. Which, again, distracting.

So she doesn’t know that James has been brought in until she walks into the infirmary and Steve’s there, arguing with a doctor and all she hears is “sedation” and “possible amnesia” and “Barnes”, before she ducks behind them and goes through the door. 

Sure enough, James is in the bed, pale as anything, one--fuck, one arm, obviously asleep. Sedated, like the doctor said.

“You can’t be in here,” someone says from behind her, sounding timid enough that she’d laugh if James wasn’t right here.

“What did they do to you?” she murmurs, but doesn’t get any closer. The restraints they have on him turn her stomach, even if she understands why they might be necessary. But.

“He shouldn’t be restrained,” she says, turning to the doctor. 

“Ma'am, with all due respect, he took down three SHIELD agents on his own before he froze and collapsed, with, well. One arm.”

“Restraints will make it worse,” she says. “Make someone sit here to guard him. Captain America out there might do it. I will, if he won’t.” 

“Of course I’ll sit with Bucky,” Steve says, and he’s come through the door while they were both talking. “What do you mean, about the restraints making it worse?”

“If he doesn’t know where he is and he’s tied down,” she says, trailing off. The tightening of Steve’s jaw lets her know he takes her point. “If you want to start, Cap, I’ll take second watch.”

“Of course,” Steve says, and she can tell he wants to ask why she cares about this soldier, but she also thinks he probably assumes she’d do that out of friendship, caring for a stranger because her teammate does. Because he would do that. Natasha wouldn’t, really, but James isn’t a stranger.

Anyhow, Steve will be briefed soon enough. He’ll know more about her connection with James then, she supposes. And about her past as well.

As it turns out, Coulson agrees with her assessment and she’s assigned to monitor James while he recovers. Which is good, because sneaking into SHIELD Medical is a bitch and a half. She can do it (of course she can), but it’s easier if she doesn’t have to.

Phil also tells her to take it easy, but doesn’t say or ask anything else, because he knows her very well.

\--  
Steve comes in when Natasha is on her second shift of James-watching.

“They briefed you, huh,” she says quietly, glancing away from James to meet Steve’s steady gaze.

“It makes sense,” he says.

She blinks. “It does?” She’s not sure what part of this makes sense to him. James still being alive must feel like a dream. Of course, if he’s been briefed on the Red Room, he should know that it’s actually more of a nightmare. 

“You, I mean,” he says. “You were always going to be remarkable, I think, but your speed and your strength is something else entirely.”

Oh. That. “We should spar sometime,” she says, testing him a little. 

He smiles. “We should,” he agrees easily. “I’ve kind of wanted to, ever since I saw the way you fight.”

“Let me know,” she says, glancing at James. He’s breathing easier now, like the swelling on his ribs has gone down. She’s keeping up with his medical charts, and it seems to be heading in the right direction. She just wishes he’d wake up so she could make sure he’s still James in there.

“I did want to ask,” Steve says, voice more hushed.

She turns back to him. “About me and James,” she says. It’s not a question.

“Yeah,” he says, and she’s never going to get used to the way his face is so open.

“He kept me alive,” she says. “I kept him alive. It was hell.”

“That’s about what I thought,” Steve says. “They briefed me, and – yeah.” He wipes a hand across his face. “Do you think he’s going to be okay, when he wakes up?”

“Probably,” she says. “Head trauma and unconsciousness usually knocked us out of the roles. It’s how I got Clint back, too.” She can’t be sure, of course, because it’s been so long since she saw James, but he froze before fainting, they said. The Winter Soldier never froze.

Steve breathes out. “Good,” he says. “That’s good. I’m gonna - I know it’s your shift, I’m not staying. I’ll be back in the morning. But I’m glad he had you. I’m glad you had each other.” 

He nods at her, and before she can figure out a response, he’s gone again.

She goes back to watching. If James isn’t himself when he wakes up, she’ll know. And she’ll be here to stop him. Here to help, in the only way she has.

\--

But she forgot to factor in how exhausted the last mission made her, and she falls asleep in the chair next to him but wakes up with James Barnes, Winter Soldier, blinking at her. No, not the Winter Soldier. This is James. She breathes out.

"Natalia?" he says, and his grip on her shoulder is bruisingly tight.

"Da," she says, and switches to English to see if it'll help the lost look in his eyes, "Welcome to New York, James Barnes."

"I--" he says, and she shrugs off his hand, sitting up. 

"Tell me what you know," she says, and winces, because that sounded like the prelude to an interrogation.

But he apparently doesn't take it that way, because he rattles off his name and American rank in English and grins the smile she remembers from way back when, before they'd both gone under completely. "It's good to see you, Tasha," he says, bastardizing her name like he always used to. 

She swallows, hearing it, and tries out a smile. "You too," she says. "But what the hell did you do to your arm?"

“Oh, this old thing?” he says, shrugging. “They gave me a metal one a while back, but it fell off at--you know, I’m not even sure. It’s a little fuzzy up there, Tasha, I have to tell you.”

“I figured,” she says. “It’s good to have you here, though.” And that’s as open as she ever gets, which he used to know. Still does, by the way he nudges at her.

“I think I’m glad to be here too,” he says. “Well, in New York, at any rate. Any idea when they’ll let me out of storage?” He never was a fan of hospitals. Or being locked up.

“Debrief first,” she says reluctantly. “You’re at SHIELD,” and she shouldn’t even be telling him that much, but she won’t lie to James, not now. Not ever.

“And what’s that when it’s at home?” he says, sounding tired.

“The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division,” she says.

“Quite the mouthful,” James mutters.

“They’re the good guys,” she says, and feels compelled to add, “mostly.” 

“You work for them?” 

“Yeah. Of my own free will, even.” Of course, originally she hadn’t really had any alternatives (it was suit up or be disappeared, though she thinks Clint would have helped her if she needed him to), but now she does her job because she wants to. And it’s an important job, keeping the world safe.

“Fancy that,” he says, but there’s more of a smile in his voice now. _You’ll get me out if I need it?_ he taps out on her hip in their bastardized half-Russian, half-English, three-quarters anything they could shove in there, version of Morse code. The one they had to relearn every time they were wiped (which is probably why there are so many languages in there, since they kept starting over with a new set of dictionaries in their heads). She has to swallow against something burning in her throat because he remembers it, still. He managed to keep it.

 _Yes,_ she taps back. 

\--

She gets him to sleep after promising to fill him in later, tapping out _in a place without cameras_ while talking about New York. They’ve given away enough already; she doesn’t really want to be hauled in for another round of are-you- _sure_ -you-can’t-remember-anything-else-about-being-a-mindwiped-assassin. But she realizes she forgot to tell James something incredibly important when she sees his face once Steve walks through the door to relieve her. He slept through Steve’s first shift, of course.

“Steve,” James says blankly. Then, more insistently when Steve stays over by the door, seemingly too overwrought to come closer: “ _Steve_ , hell, don’t be an idiot, come over here and _tell me_ how you’re still, still--”

Steve takes three halting steps, as clumsy as Natasha has ever seen him, and it brings him up next to James’ bedside. “Ice,” he says. “I mean, I was frozen--but you died before that, Bucky, I saw you fall--”

“Long story,” James says, glancing at Natasha. “Long fucking story, now give me a goddamn hug, kid, fucking hell--”

“Careful,” Natasha says, because Steve is stronger than he knows, always, and James has three broken ribs and one arm and so many bruises, still.

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he’s not looking at her, but she knows he understood her from the way he reaches for Bucky. She slips off the bed, then, because they deserve this, and she won’t ever mention the raw noise she hears Steve make behind her when they finally get a hold of each other. Possibly she’s going to go fiddle with the video feed from the room right now, assuming Phil doesn’t find her first.

“Agent Romanoff,” he says in her ear then, right on cue.

She sighs. “Yeah?” 

“Come by my office, please,” Phil says, and there’s enough of Phil there, as opposed to Agent Coulson, that she does as he asks. 

“He’s awake,” she says unnecessarily when she walks through the door. Phil’s definitely been looking at the feed, from the way he looks a little concerned. 

“I saw,” Phil says. “You two do know each other, then.”

She raises an eyebrow at him, because he knows that. 

She told him and Clint, the night before when she hadn’t slept but was getting ready to do her second shift in the infirmary by James’ side anyway. 

They both objected, because of the aforementioned lack of sleep. 

So she said “I know him. From Russia.” and Phil didn’t look surprised, because he already knew and she knew he knew, but Clint turned white.

“From before?” he said, and the pain in his voice made her ache, but she couldn’t really comfort him right now.

“Yeah,” she said instead. “We made friends.” Much more than that, but she couldn’t find the words to articulate it right then. Possibly it would have been easier in Russian; she’s not sure. 

“Go,” Phil said. “But then you’re coming back here to sleep. I’ll cancel your meetings.”

“Fine,” she said, and she’d done as he asked, because he didn’t ever tell her what to do in their private life so she must have looked like hell.

Phil doesn’t tell her what to do now either; he just asks about James and makes a note in one of his files when she tells him how he’s doing. If he were anyone else, she wouldn’t trust him with the truth, but Phil isn’t like any superior she ever had. She trusts him to keep James safe.

“Go back and see him,” Phil says, closing the file. And then, smiling, “I’ll see you tonight.”

James looks up when she walks in, eyes clearing. Steve turns and his shoulders slump a little. 

“Your turn?” he says.

“You know, you guys don’t have to babysit me,” James says, but his eyes say _don’t leave me alone_ please and she wouldn’t.

“Get some sleep, Steve,” she says, voice as gentle as she can make it. “I promise he’ll still be here in the morning.”

“I know what your promises are worth,” he says, and she still doesn’t know what to do with Captain America’s way of meaning everything he says. She doesn’t know anyone else who sounds that sincere.

“Tasha’s promises are solid,” James agrees, nodding, the curve of his mouth turning serious. As well it should, when they’re talking about promises. 

“Almost all of them,” she says, not elaborating further. It isn’t actually always possible to get people out when they need it. It took her a week to get Clint out once. 

And she left James behind in Russia. She’d been running for her life, head full of memories she couldn’t make sense of, but she left him behind. She wonders if he remembers that part.

Steve touches James’ face, gently, before leaving. His eyes are frighteningly open.

She takes a breath once Steve has left. “Hey,” she says. “How bored are you, on a scale of one to ten?”

“About fifty,” James says. “Please tell me you brought me something to do?” It’s a little more than boredom, she knows, and she can see it in the way his hand moves. Restless, shaky. James doesn’t like being locked up.

“You should sleep more, Barnes,” she says sternly.

“As should you,” he replies, half-smiling. “Doesn’t mean you’ll do it, yeah?”

“Eventually I will,” she says, but he knows what that means and smirks like he just won something. He looks a little easier, too. “You wanted something to do?” she says.

“Please,” he repeats. 

She sets her backpack on the chair. “I brought you some stuff,” she says, and picks out a deck of cards and a stack of books.

“I’m not a great reader,” he says.

“You’ll like these,” she replies. He will. She knows what he read in Russian, so she brought those, and she included a couple of the books she read after she came back. Phil gave them to her. He won’t mind Natasha passing them on now. “Start with this one,” she says, handing him _The Moon is Down_. “It’s short.” Her mouth quirks.

“You’re implying I don’t have staying power, Miss Romanova,” he says. “I’m not sure I like your insinuations.” He’s smiling. 

“It’s Romanoff, here,” she says, but she thinks about it. “Romanova is fine.” _I haven’t changed all that much_ , except that she has, and he knows it too.

“Well, Romanova,” he says, “do you still remember how to play _durek_?”

“Careful,” she says. “I might take you for all you’ve got.”

“I can stake this very fine hospital gown as a start,” Bucky says earnestly, “but I trust I’ll have other stakes soon.”

“Let’s play with pennies,” she says, but she’s laughing at him and he grins when he sees it.

“There you are,” he says.

He used to be the only one who could make her laugh. “Here I am,” she agrees, and deals.

\--

Eventually, after another two weeks of recuperating, he’s deemed well enough to go through a debriefing. Natasha isn’t allowed in but Phil is. He touches her elbow before going, which she knows means _I’ll take care of him_ , but Phil doesn’t know James. It chafes at her, having James stuck where she can’t tell if he needs her to get him out. Having to answer question after question like it’s easy to remember the when and the where when your head is essentially full of soup. 

“Range,” Clint says, tugging at her shoulder, and she only stops herself a second before she pushes him away violently. She isn’t sure why she’s reacting like things are a threat right now, familiar things. Familiar people.

“You think I need target practice?” Her question is tired, she can hear it.

“Before you move on to people, yeah,” he says, blunt as ever, and it shakes her loose, a little.

“Yeah,” is all she says.

“You were really close, huh?” he says, an hour later, after Natasha has perforated target after target in increasingly elaborate patterns. He sounds careful, like he’s not sure what to think.

Natasha isn’t sure what to answer, either. “Yes,” she says, because the truth is usually the easiest. “He was my best friend,” she decides on, finally, because it’s the closest to what they were to each other. She doesn’t like telling SHIELD’s cameras even that much, but Clint is looking a little brittle.

People are difficult, even if you know them well enough to read them.

“I’m glad he got out,” Clint offers, and he is, even as he’s worrying about something. 

“It’s good for Steve,” she says.

“And you,” Clint says. “Best friends. Good to have them around.” 

Natasha shrugs, focusing on the target in front of her. She’s counting down the hours in her head, even as she knows there’s no time limit on how long they might keep someone for debriefing (hers took 18 days).

Steve comes down to join them after a while, even though he possibly needs the target practice even less than Clint does. Enhanced senses makes for ridiculous accuracy. 

“Any word?” she says, even though she knows there won’t have been yet.

“Apparently I don’t have the clearance to sit in,” Steve says.

Clint snorts. “If Natasha isn’t allowed in, you bet your ass your clearance level isn’t high enough.”

Steve startles, then--like he always does when he’s struck by something new about the 20th century or his life--visibly recalibrates. It’s unsettling, how open he is about it. “I don’t suppose so,” he says, shrugging.

“Phil’s in with him,” she says, and it makes Steve’s shoulders loosen a little. She knows his debriefing wasn’t easy either. She hadn’t cared much at the time, or rather, she’d been embroiled in a really nasty border conflict in Central Asia, but Phil mentioned it when she got back. Didn’t look approving of the way SHIELD treated a national hero. 

“Were you in it?” she asked him, because she knew he wouldn’t have let it go on if he was there.

“No,” he said. _Haven’t even met him officially_ were the unspoken words, and she grinned.

“Aw, you haven’t gotten to see if he measures up to the comics yet?” Phil really liked Captain America as a kid. It was cute.

“I already know he does,” Phil said, smiling faintly. 

“Oh?”

Phil nodded. “He saved the world, Agent Romanoff, and it got him--well, not killed, but he thought it would and he still did what he had to do. That makes him a hero.”

She shrugged, because haven’t they all saved the world once or twice? But it’s entirely true that Steve is a hero, worthy of the idolization of little children. Champion of truth and justice, and all that. Her own record is far too tarnished for her to ever be counted among that number, but she does her job. It’s worth something. 

James did his job too. She knows the debriefing is partly for the safety of SHIELD, to make sure the formerly brainwashed assassin didn’t bring back any nasty surprises, in his head or otherwise, but Natasha thinks she’d be better at spotting them than a gang of psychologists who don’t actually know what they’re dealing with.

Mostly she just wants to keep her promise to get him out, because she’s fairly sure he’s going to need it soon, but she can’t do it yet. Hence, target practice. Clint is pretty good at spotting what she needs.

“Natasha,” Phil says in her ear. Not Agent Romanoff. She snaps to attention, touching her earpiece.

“Yes,” she says, and both Steve and Clint look at her. 

“We’re done for the day. Bring Captain America and take Lieutenant Barnes back to his room, please.”

“Copy that, sir,” she says. “Let’s go.” She nods at Steve. “They’re done for the day and we get to take him back.”

“Can I come?” Clint says.

“Of course,” Steve says immediately. “You haven’t met Bucky yet, have you?”

“He won’t really be at his best after today,” Natasha warns.

Clint shrugs. “I just want to say hi. He’s important to both of you.”

\--

Unsurprisingly, Clint and James take to each other like what the Americans call a house on fire. It makes Natasha smile faintly; she’s glad neither of them are prone to rivalries or she would have thought two snipers together might be a recipe for professional jealousy.

Instead, as Phil puts it, looking at Clint next to James’ bed, the two of them discussing possible trajectories for taking out the lights in the infirmary using paperclips and a plastic cup, it’s “Mayhem, Natasha. Chaos and mayhem.” He’s smiling, so Natasha thinks he probably agrees with her that the two of them might be good for each other. Regardless of the inevitable consequences for their immediate surroundings.

And later, it’s Clint who says, sounding like he’s thinking out loud: “What are they doing about an arm for him? He said he had a metal one for a while, are we making him another one?”

“The SHIELD tech division is working on it,” Phil says.

Clint frowns. “Could we--hmm.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Natasha says, because she does, and he’s right.

Phil looks at her, then at Clint. “You--we’re not letting Stark into the room of someone who is seriously injured _and_ a sniper.”

Clint just grins.

“No,” Phil says, but he already sounds resigned. Technically he could do a lot of things to prevent the two of them from getting Stark and James into the same room, because Phil is a master of bureaucracy and red tape when he needs to be, but he won’t do it now, not when she and Clint both want this.

Of course, there’s no guarantee Stark will make James an arm.

“If Steve asks,” Natasha says, thinking out loud.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, and they’re grinning at each other now.

“God save us all,” Phil mutters, but Natasha can see his eyes, and he’s happy.

\--

By the time they get Stark in to meet James, he’s trying out a prosthetic arm that doesn’t “do anything fun,” as James puts it. 

Predictably, Stark doesn’t even say hello before he’s shaking his head. “Coulson,” he says, “Coulson, agent of my heart, what have I told you about giving tools to the monkeys? This, what is this, the reaction time is ridiculous--move that for me, will you, hey, yeah, like that, no, this is ridiculous, _Coulson. Agent._ ” 

“Can you do better?” Natasha says, and Clint’s smile echoes her challenge. They’re good at what they do.

“Can I do--what is that, is that an insult? It’s below your usual standards, Romanoff.” And then Stark’s face softens a little, turning to James in the bed. “Barnes, right? You want a better arm?” It’s an honest question, and the way Stark waits for James to answer is wholly patient. He’s come a long way. Or maybe he just recognizes the look on James’ face.

“Which one are you?” James says, drawls. “You’re a goddamn deck of cards, the lot of you, impossible to keep track of. Wait. You look--”

Stark doesn’t wince, even though he must know what’s coming.

“You look like your dad,” James says. “Kind of.” 

Tony shrugs. “So they tell me,” he says, but he doesn’t flinch the way he used to when Howard was brought up. 

James nods. “You have a robot suit, Steve says.”

“A robot suit,” Stark says musingly. “I suppose that’s one way to put it, if you want to, well. Be the opposite of hyperbolic.”

“It deserves hyperbole?” James is grinning. It’s a nice sight.

“Yeah,” Stark says. “I’ll take you to my workshop sometime. But only if you let me build you an arm, because honestly, I can’t even look at that thing.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” James says, and slides the arm prototype off. No one flinches, and Natasha loves them all a little in that moment.

Not love, perhaps. That is nearly always the wrong word with her. But Clint touches her arm like he knows what she’s thinking.  
\--

Later that night, Natasha unbuckles her gun (the visible one) and thinks about shedding skin. She thinks about James Barnes, adapting to his new surroundings so easily; she knows why it's easy, knows what it's like to have the ability to adjust to anything burned into you. They were there together, after all.

But they're not there anymore, and she doesn't know if James will learn how to shed his skin and slip into a new life the way she did. Becoming an undercover agent helped, or at least made it easier to pretend, but there are still days when Natasha wakes up and isn't sure where she is, when the faces she sees blur together and become dangerously unfamiliar. She hates it, the lack of control, and it only makes her train all the harder. She’s not sure if James will be able to piece together his old self with the new life, doesn’t know if he’ll be able to make himself fit with Steve like he used to and Natasha like he used to and SHIELD like--yeah. 

James was laughing, earlier. She thinks it probably reassured the others, but she remembers he used to laugh like that while she stitched him up and told him filthier and filthier jokes to keep him preoccupied while she made sure he didn't bleed out on her watch. She can't remember when she chose to care about him or why she ended up leaving him behind (no, she knows that one, because the morning she woke up and remembered and ran, she also remembered she would have killed anyone trying to make her leave and she only had one shot at escaping). She also can't remember if anyone ever said anything helpful to her.

"Call me if you need to," she told James before she left today. "Or if you want." She's officially allowed to say that now and to take his calls because she’s been appointed his handler, sort of, even if Steve is practically attached to his bedside. Phil didn't tell her it was because she'd know if James turned dangerous before anyone else, but she knows her Coulson pretty well. 

Speaking of Coulson, she can definitely hear him doing the dishes in the kitchen. It’s unusual for him to be home this early.

“Did Stark create any new headaches today?” she calls, walking into the kitchen, because Phil is in charge of coordinating the administrative aspects of establishing the Avengers initiative under the umbrella of SHIELD, and Tony likes to make it even more complicated than it already is.

“No, he’s being uncharacteristically helpful,” Phil says, turning around and wiping his hands on a dishtowel. “He even offered up the old Stark mansion as team headquarters. Apparently he’s converting it into another arc reactor-powered building.”

“Why’s he being accommodating, then?” Natasha says, opening the fridge and passing Phil the vegetables and the chicken. They have this down to a dance by now.

“I have you and Clint and your conspiracy to thank for that, actually,” Phil says, and he’s smiling. “Turns out it’s more interesting to make an arm for a sniper than to fuck around with a bureaucrat.” 

Natasha makes an amused noise. “As if Tony still thinks of you as a bureaucrat,” she says, and starts in on the chopping. She doesn’t have to watch her hands while she does this, which freaks some people out, though Phil has never complained. He just takes her chopping board when she’s done and adds the vegetables to the heated frying pan, and—there’s the key in the door, yes, and Clint comes in just in time to get the plates out and there’s the dinner.

“I don’t know how you always know when the food is ready,” Phil says, teasing.

Clint grins. “It’s based on a very complicated behavioural analysis,” he says loftily. “Part of my job as a sniper.”

“Or you installed a hidden camera somewhere,” Natasha says drily.

“Or that,” Clint agrees. 

“Ah, romance,” Phil says. “Surveillance cameras and remote recordings.”

“You would know,” Clint says, smiling at him. And yes, yes he would. Natasha will never ever forget the time when she came in late to Phil’s office to turn in a form and caught him watching a video of her and Clint on a mission. He turned to look at her when she came in and that’s when she knew.

It took them another year to get their act together, because Natasha didn’t really think love was a good idea for any of them. Or any kind of a relationship. Budapest got them to cohabitate, that drawn-out fucked-up wreck of a mission (Clint bleeding out under her hands, ignoring the ominous pain in her ribs, fucking broken, why did they have to be broken so she couldn’t carry Clint out, Phil practically screaming over the comms and then deciding on his own to be their backup because the actual backup was taking too long to get there). But the way he looked at her when she caught him in his office, that’s when she knew.

“Nothing says love like stalking,” Natasha agrees, and lets herself smile at them both. Clint ruffles her hair and she doesn’t know when she stopped slapping his hand away when he did that, and he gets up to get their plates and load the dishwasher. 

“Did Phil do the dishes by hand again?” he says, balancing three glasses on top of each other and stacking plates in a way that anyone else would drop (well, she could do it, perhaps). 

Natasha grins. “Yes,” she says.

“Tattle-tale,” Phil says, long-suffering, because this exchange always prompts Clint to have a long and extensive demonstration of their fantastic appliance that does this _for you_ , Phil, isn’t it amazing how you don’t have to roll your sleeves up and get your shirt all wrinkled?

But he only does it to tease Phil, not because he wants Phil to stop doing the dishes by hand and stop taking off his jacket and rolling his sleeves up to do it. Natasha knows this. She likes Phil’s wrists too.

\--

The move of all of them to the Avengers Mansion happens a week later. It’s not an actual move, the three of them keep their apartment (nominally it’s just Coulson’s; Natasha and Clint both have fake addresses), but both she and Clint get rooms. Adjacent to each other, thankfully, so the sneaking around shouldn’t be too complicated.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell the team. Well. It’s that she doesn’t want to deal with the commentary. She tells James, in a roundabout way, when she goes to see him after they’ve all inspected their new headquarters.

“Phil won’t live there,” she says and then glances at him, because it may not be immediately obvious why that should matter to her. And they’re on SHIELD’s surveillance system, so she can’t tell him here. She’s fairly sure Fury knows, but technically she thinks they’re violating some sort of regulation, which is the reason for the paper trails Phil set up to make it seem as if she and Clint have apartments elsewhere.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll still keep an eye on you,” James says, tapping out _Clint?_ on her hand.

Both, she taps back and feels her chest tighten with the effort it would take to say it out loud. They don’t even say it to each other out loud.

“But wait, is Stark going to live there too? Because I hate to break it to you, darling, but the man’s a bit of a menace.”

“Don’t remind me,” she says drily, but she’s looking at James’ smile as he taps Good for you.

“So why’d you agree to the move then?”

Good question. “I don’t know,” she says slowly. Stark offered them the mansion almost right away after he told Phil he would, looking as earnest as she ever saw him (he still gleefully created a mountain of paperwork for Phil, but that’s different). Bruce looked cautiously happy, especially after asking about labs and Tony promising to reopen his dad’s old one, which made Pepper’s face soften. Clint didn’t protest, but she knows he hates the thought of being around that many people on a regular basis when he’s not on duty. She makes a mental note to work out all the escape routes with him. 

“Steve’s moving too?” James looks down at their hands.

“He’ll be over here every day,” Natasha says.

“He worries,” James says, like that should mean something besides the immediate fact of it.

“Yes,” Natasha agrees, because she knows what James means. Love can be exhausting in its concern. “I’ll see if I can distract him a little,” she adds.

“Thanks,” James says. The circles under his eyes are dark enough to look like bruises.

“Still not sleeping?” she says.

“You know,” James says, leaning back and closing his eyes. “It’s too quiet in here.”

Too quiet used to mean _everyone’s gone,_ Natasha remembers. Too quiet meant that someone had died, someone was on mission, the whole damn building was sixty seconds from going up in flames and no one had informed them about the impending evacuation. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says. 

\--

“You want to transfer Barnes to the Avengers mansion?” Phil isn’t questioning her judgment, exactly, not like the time when he told her she’d be insane to go in after Barton, long before their thing started and long before she understood that when Phil looked like that he was desperately afraid for you. This is more him trying to figure out what she wants.

“Yes,” she says, trying to be patient. They’re in Phil’s office so she can’t be as open as she wants to be, but she can say this: “No one knows better than I do what can trigger someone who spent time in the Red Room; no one would be better at containing James than the Avengers.” Which isn’t strictly true, SHIELD has plenty of competent people capable of containing even near-superpowered soldiers, Phil included (though a god had been too much, even for him), but SHIELD probably wouldn’t buy him a vodka bottle afterwards.

“He’s only been here for a month,” Phil says gently. “And he spent most of those sedated.”

“Rehabilitation is a priority,” she says, reminding him of what he said in his original briefing on James. Then, because she’s mean when she needs to be: “How do you think Clint would have recovered if we had locked him in instead of taking him home?”

Phil winces. “Point taken,” he says. “He would have taken it just about as well as you did, I imagine.”

“I was used to it,” she says reflexively, even as she shudders internally at the reminder of those first months, when Clint was the only visitor she was allowed and they were monitored, always monitored. Finally he brought Phil in to visit, and Phil looked at her, looked again, ordered the restraints taken off, and said:

“Do you want to go outside for a bit? You can’t leave, you have to stay within our sight at all times, but.”

“Yes,” she said, too tired to give a damn about whether or not she seemed weak. She was fairly sure she could get away from them if she needed, even with Clint-the-marksman-who-never-missed by her side, but she also didn’t know whether her enemies would be looking for her. Her other enemies. 

And then she’d seen the sun again, and her arms were free, and Clint supported her elbow automatically to keep her from falling over at the relief of no longer being contained, and she didn’t push him away.

“I’ll put in the request,” Phil says, because he reads her better than anyone but Clint, and she doesn’t smile or thank him but she touches his shoulder before she leaves.

\--

It still takes weeks. Natasha chafes at the sluggishness of bureaucracy and slams her way through eleven practice dummies before Clint asks if she wouldn’t rather have a person to hit.

“Not now,” she says, eyeing up the next dummy. She does normally spar with Clint, but she’s scared of what she’d do to him right now. She’s better at hand-to-hand than he is when they’re both at their regular speed, but currently her irritation’s giving her a hell of an edge.

So it would be dangerous. Is her point. Which she makes by arching an eyebrow at Clint.

He shakes his head. “Not me,” he says, and then she sees Captain America next to him. Natasha starts to smile. It’s probably not a very nice smile, but she’s not a very nice girl.

“Can you hit a lady, Cap?” she asks.

“He can try, anyway,” Clint says, grinning.

Steve looks between them. “I told you I wanted to spar against you,” he says to her.

She looks at Clint. _I’m on to you._ He likes watching her fight.

 _Take it out of my hide later,_ says his smirk.

“Well then,” she says, backing up to let Steve into the ring. “Show me what you’ve got.”

It takes him a minute to work up to her speed. Like her, he’s used to sparring with people who aren’t nearly as fast and tends to slow down just a little bit so that they’ll get something out of it and not just get flattened. But she’s as fast as he is - if not faster - and he’ll need to be moving at full speed and use everything he’s got. It only takes him twenty-seven seconds to notice, and by then he has a black eye and is grinning from ear to ear. 

It takes him another two minutes to land a real hit, and it knocks her back against the side of the ring, gasping. He’s definitely stronger than her. Good to know. She smiles the smile Clint calls her most dangerous and launches herself right back at Steve, knocking him over and planting an elbow in his chest. 

That seems to be the signal for him to start fighting for real, and soon they’re attracting an audience as they’re leaping out of the ring and making use of the practice equipment around them. Natasha can feel the bruises spring up when she’s ground into the floor at one point, and she gives back as good as she got when she dents one of Steve’s ribs. She wouldn’t break them, not for a practice run, but he can heal his way out of anything that isn’t too serious. 

The other SHIELD agents break into a spontaneous applause when they both jump into the air and crash into each other on the way down, grappling to end up on top. She gets him into a chokehold through judicious employment of sharp elbows and fast legwork, but he breaks it and then it’s her turn to struggle. She hasn’t felt this alive in weeks.

He takes a knee to the face without flinching but the kick to his solar plexus has him gasping and then he gets her back, throwing her hard enough to knock the breath out of her. He can’t follow it up though, flopping down next to her, gasping.

“That was better than sex,” says Natasha, laughing through her choked breathing.

“I know what you mean,” Steve says, though he’s blushing a little as he says it. “I’m all--damn. You’re very good. Very very good.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Captain Rogers,” she says. “Let’s do this again sometime.”

“Please,” he says, earnest as ever, only now he’s bleeding in a couple of places and the shiner she gave him at the end of their fight is a thing of beauty. 

“You know what they say about me,” she says, slowly getting to her feet and smiling at him.

“They say a lot of things about you,” he says, and she’s heard that before but for once it doesn’t sound like a slur.

“I give people what they deserve,” she says, reaching out and pulling him to his feet.

\--

Clint comes and finds her in the showers. Of course he does.

“Better than sex?” he says, sauntering in, grinning. “I think I’m insulted.”

“So show me you can do better,” she says, because he does like a challenge and she knows she must cut quite the figure like this, naked and wet.

Clint is looking at her face though. She doesn’t really understand him sometimes but the weight in his gaze makes her feel warm. 

“Come here,” she says, and it’s about sex, sure, it’s about her slamming him into the wall and biting him into submission, but his hands curve around her shoulders like he doesn’t care what she is or what she’s done. And he knows most of it. Not all, not nearly, but he and Phil, they know more about her than anyone other than James. It used to be terrifying. She doesn’t know what to call it now.

He doesn’t tell her he loves her, but she doesn’t need that. They don’t need that.

\--

Phil finds them, after.

“I had to disable the feed again,” he says, looking them up and down. Natasha aches everywhere. They’re both naked. One of her eyes is swelling shut from where Steve got in an excellent punch and Clint is scratched all to hell, leaning against the wall and panting. 

“You watched it first, right?” Clint says.

Phil grins, nodding. He’s walking closer and narrowly avoids Natasha’s leg swipe. She telegraphed it pretty clearly, she knows, but she mostly just wanted to let Phil know that she wants to drag him down onto the ground. Instead, he reaches out, pulling Clint in for a kiss. 

Yeah. That. She never tires of watching them.

“You’re wearing too many clothes, sir,” she says. “Hardly appropriate for the showers.”

“I’m sure it’s in the regulations somewhere,” Clint agrees. “No clothes in the showers, lest you make the other agents uncomfortable. Like on nudist beaches.”

Phil snorts. “Subtle,” he says.

“My middle name,” Clint says.

Natasha shakes her head, getting back up. She traces one nail down Phil’s neck. Clint’s eyes glaze over a little, watching. 

Phil clears his throat. “Home?”

“Yeah,” she says softly.

\--

Two days later, they get the go-ahead to move James. When SHIELD moves, they move fast, and the vehicle and route are set for three hours later. Natasha protests, because it means she doesn’t have time to go over the route in detail first, making sure no one unfriendly is out there, but they tell her it’s taken care of. She gets in with James because no way is she letting him go off with unfamiliar SHIELD agents in a van, and Steve is off taking care of something that required Captain America’s particular flair for dramatics. 

She realizes she ought to have gotten Phil involved when the van veers off-course and the air in the back fills with knockout gas. She opens her mouth to warn Bucky, and has time to think This is why I don’t get emotionally involved before the gas takes over. 

\--

She wakes up when they get the van doors open but before she can move there’s a needle in her arm and she’s pulled back under again. 

\--

Natasha opens her eyes. It’s dark. Very dark. Distantly she notes the very familiar shiver of drugs in her system. They’re wearing off quicker than they would on a person with a more average physiology. She still gets the shaking and the blurry vision, but it fades faster. 

Unfortunately, that has its downsides.

She’s wearing restraints, her elbows cinched together behind her back and her wrists tied together. Her legs are cuffed. She leans over and vomits. Noisily. 

After she’s finished, she takes in her surroundings. Standard jail cell, below ground, no immediately visible exit apart from the door at one end of the room, James slumped against--James. Fuck.

Natasha tries to get up and nearly falls over, since she’s apparently also attached to the wall. Goddammit. 

“James,” she hisses. And then, when he fails to open his eyes--and they’ve tried to take off his arm, she can see it by the gouges in the metal--she swallows and whispers, “ _Zimoj soldat_.” 

He flinches, opening his eyes abruptly. For a second it’s like he’s not in there at all, gaze dark and cold, and then he blinks himself out of it. Natasha is abruptly grateful for the SHIELD de-brainwashing process, unpleasant and thorough as it is. Not that she doesn’t trust her ability to get James back, but being tied up, her options are a little more limited than when she knocked some sense back into Clint.

“Tasha?” he says, voice hoarse.

“Kidnapped,” she says.

“Dammit,” he says. 

“Don’t you wish they’d learn a new trick?” she says, squirming to test the give of her restraints.

“Oh yeah,” he agrees, starting carefully to move as well. “Fuck,” he says then. “They’ve stuck my arm to the wall somehow.” It looks like a sleeve from where she’s sitting, molding him to the wall behind him. 

His metal arm. Great. “We’ll figure it out,” she says. Then, looking at him, she glances up and down, their standard signal for surveillance. 

“Nah, not unless they’ve hidden it real well,” James says, shaking his head. Of course he’d looked for that first.

“I feel like shit,” she says. She does, nauseated and shaky. She doesn’t know what they used to sedate her, but it’s left her wrung out and weak. 

“Fucking drugs,” James agrees. He looks pale and his jaw is bruised. They must have smacked him around a bit when they brought him in. She’s going to get him out. She’s absolutely going to get him out because she just got him back and Steve just got him back and this is not where they’re supposed to be right now. 

She starts to squirm more purposefully, slowly wriggling one of her hands up, up. She’s very good at this. They used to test them, in the Red Room, and Natasha can get out of nearly any type of restraints while blindfolded and under water. If she had her knives, she’d already be out of these, even with her elbows restrained. The thin, thin blade she keeps in her wrist sleeve is sharp enough to cut through plastic and through much harder materials. 

Damn, she wishes she had her knives.

But there’s a trick to these, if you know anything about pressure and force. She closes her eyes and pulls and her elbows click apart, the cable tie burst. 

“The wall--” she says, because she doesn’t seem to be able to turn enough to see what’s behind her.

“Metal chain attached to your cuffs,” James says immediately. 

“Good,” she murmurs, and gets her legs under her. Springing from the ground and pushing off with as much force as she can muster, she breaks the wrist cuffs as well and ends up nearly sprawling on James. After that, with her hands free, it’s easy work to click the ankle cuffs open. “We ought to strategize,” she says, “and yet--”

“I just want to get out of here,” James says. “But I’m pretty fucking stuck.” 

“Mm,” Natasha says, looking around. There’s nothing handy around to use as a hammer (really, where’s Thor when you need him; Mjolnir would break the restraints but not the vibranium in James’ arm) but there ought to be a way to get the weird-looking sleeve open or whoever’s got them wouldn’t be able to move him. She gets close, feeling around the edges of the cuff where it seems to be melded to the wall. There are grooves welded into the metal and she takes a deep breath, touching at them with the same sensitivity that used to help her crack safes, back when secret files were kept on paper instead of on a server. 

Sure enough, after a few minutes something whirrs and James’ arm loosens.

“How did--” 

She smirks at him. _I’m just that good._

 _Don’t I know it,_ says his answering smile. They’ve done this so many times it hardly bears mentioning, and every minute it feels more and more familiar. He’s broken her out of the deepest pits of hell and she’s gotten him out of every kind of trouble you could think of.

 _Except the last time._ She swallows. She’s damn well going to get him out this time.

His legs are still chained up and strapped down, like they thought he might be more of a threat than her, and she has no lock picks on her. 

“See if you can get the arm to turn on,” she says. “I can’t believe Tony Stark would build you something that wouldn’t be useful in a hostage situation.” She shakes her head, trying to clear it of the clinging drug-induced fog. 

James fiddles with a couple of buttons, awkward. His elbow looks swollen, she notes. Most likely from when they were brought in. His knee is swollen as well. 

“It’s not like I didn’t learn how to use it,” he says. “There just wasn’t much time to get into the finer details of things,” and that’s when they hear them. Footsteps coming down the hall. 

Natasha grimaces and looks up. Her muscles feel like jelly, still, and she doesn’t have nearly as much control as she usually does. Still.

 _Boost me,_ she tilts her head at James, who nods, lacing his hands together. Some things stick even through years and years of cryogenic freezing, apparently. Natasha takes two steps and leaps, aiming for James’ metal hand, and manages to reach the bars on the ceiling, swinging herself up. 

The two guards who come in are wearing very familiar uniforms. She gets the tremor in her arms under control near-immediately, and uses the momentum of coming down from the ceiling to kick one of them in the head and pin the other one to the ground. They’re fast, but she’s faster, even coming off of being drugged and chained up. 

James grins when she’s done. “It’s nice to see some things don’t change,” he says. 

“Some things ought to,” she says, looking down at the guards on the ground. James’ mouth twists. They both recognize the insignia, and one of the guards yelled in Russian before she had him down. Ordinarily she would have gotten him before he could do that, but she’s a hair slower than usual, which is just irritating.

“You think they want us back?” James says.

She nods, blinking away the image of the stasis tube behind her eyes. They weren’t used very often, only on the operatives the Red Room were afraid to let out between missions. She saw Bucky in one once, frozen and cold. It’s not a memory she likes. 

It would be nice if she could pick and choose which ones she kept.

One of the guards has the keys to James’ leg chains on him. She gets him loose and helps him up and to the door. He doesn’t protest; they’re not exactly new to supporting each other through injuries. 

“I don’t suppose you were awake when they brought us in?” The hallways go both ways; no helpful signs pointing towards the exit.

“It’s right, left, then up the stairs,” James says, “but after that I don’t know. I woke up about halfway down the stairs and I don’t know how many guards there are along the way. There are cameras, though.”

She grimaces. “If only I had the rest of my suit,” she says, and shrugs at James’ look. “If you’re fast enough it hides you from cameras, at least partly.” She’s fast enough for it to work, and James is too, at least normally. 

“I gotta get me one of those,” he murmurs, and then they’re off. Natasha lifted a gun and a pair of knives off of one of the guards, and James took a gun, which makes her feel much better about taking the lead. He’ll cover her. Even injured and exhausted, he’s as accurate as Clint, which says a lot. 

They get halfway down the first corridor before they hear more footsteps. Natasha flattens herself to the wall and James melts into the shadows behind her, preternaturally still in that way he always had. He taps her hip and she nods. Three people. Two people wearing military boots and one in more ordinary footwear.

Two guards and someone in a lab coat round the corner. James has both of the guards down - he’s shooting to kill, she notes - before she moves to pin the scientist against the wall, one hand over his mouth and a knife tickling his throat.

“You’re going to get us out,” she says in Russian, and the flinch beneath her hands tells her she’s been understood. “You’re going to get us out, and maybe I won’t kill you, after.”

“I might,” James says casually, and he’s behind her now, at her back, tying together the hands of the scientist who whimpers but doesn’t move.

“Walk,” Natasha says softly, and wrenches him away from the wall, keeping one hand over his mouth and the knife against his spine, where it would do a lot of damage if it went in. 

They make it another three minute down the hallway, rounding a few corners carefully before there’s movement and shouting ahead of them. Natasha shoves the scientist she’s ferrying into the wall, knocking him out to get him out of the way. If this is the Red Room, hostages are pointless, and she’d rather be free to fight.

Ten guards, but it’s a narrow space. She does well when she’s cornered. Three guards are down within thirty seconds, casualty of a leg swipe, an elbow to the face and a quick slice across a hamstring. James fiddles with his arm and seems to get it to work after another twenty seconds, too, because there’s a shivering red light that she remembers from Stark showing off the arm. She wishes she knew how much further they needed to go to get out, but it doesn’t matter. They’re getting out. 

All in all, it takes them a minute and a half to down the ten guards. Natasha notes idly that she’s pulled something in her shoulder, but it’s not going to impede her until they’re no longer in here. James is another story. He’s breathing hard and leaning against the wall, and she knows he’s hurting. He caught a boot to the ribs sometime in the last scuffle, in addition to his knee and his arm and whatever else happened when he was brought in.

“Come on,” she says softly.

He nods. “Fuck, Tasha,” he says. “If--” He opens his hand.

She shakes her head. _I’m not leaving you again._

“No light yet,” he says instead of whatever he was going to say.

“Underground,” she says. The first guards had the look of people who hasn’t seen enough sun in a while.

“I hate underground facilities,” he says. The Red Room had them, and they kept the stasis tubes on the lowest levels. It was one of the reasons she couldn’t get him out. “You’d think they’d come up with something new, wouldn’t you?”

“Forty-story houses are so easy to see from afar,” she says, smiling a little, thinking of the Helicarrier. Fury isn’t one to go for the tried-and-true method.

“Still,” James says. “I can’t possibly be expected to stay somewhere built by someone who is this boring and predictable.” 

“Let’s get out of here, then,” Natasha suggests, nodding towards the stairs. 

“After you,” he says, and they’re off again. She can hear distant noise and movement, and it figures that their latest rumble with the guards got someone’s attention. She hates not knowing enough about a location to be able to hide. 

James is moving better now, more focused, and she wants him out of here with an intensity she isn’t used to. There’s no way to distance herself; it’s as immediate as the fear she felt on the Helicarrier, this care and anger that she’s feeling. She thinks of Clint and Phil too, how much this has to be hurting them. 

It’s an enormous facility. Surprisingly quiet, considering its size, but it’s very clear that there is a lot going on beyond imprisonment of former Russian assassins. If they had time she’d be going into some of the rooms, particularly the labs they come across after they’ve come up the stairs, but they don’t. So she’ll either torch the building as they get out or she’ll come back for them later. Familiar-looking insignia and someone speaking Russian isn’t enough to confirm that this is tied to Project X or any other of their former masters, but it’s concerning. As are the biohazard signs and instructions to wear protective suits littering the doors of two of the labs. 

James’ hand on her elbow halts her, and she quickly realizes why he stopped her. There’s another group of people coming towards them, and they’re coming fast. She sets a hand on James’ shoulder, sending him an apologetic look that he rolls his eyes at, and pushes off and up, coming down on the first guard to turn the corner, taking out two people at once and getting low quickly to clear the way for James’ gun. 

This crowd is better trained; they realize how accurate James is quickly and pull back, but not before she’s gotten three and he’s gotten two and injured a third. Hell, but she wants her gear. She has two guns, pepper spray and two knives at this point, but they’re nothing like her favored equipment and she’s lacking everything she would normally use for an assault like this. And she could light the pepper spray on fire to clear this lot out quickly, but that would leave them without escape routes, since neither of them know the facility. 

“Natasha Romanova?” says a voice in Russian, then. She glances up to the cameras, and sure enough, there are speakers next to them. 

She nods, shifting her wrist minutely to get a hand on her knife. She’s still watching the corridor ahead of them.

“We have you surrounded,” the voice continues. Light, pleasant, and strangely familiar, even through the voice filter they are clearly using. “The best thing for you and Barnes would be to give in and come quietly.” 

Natasha smiles. If Clint could see her now he’d gesture to everyone to duck for cover.

“Catch me first,” she says, and takes out the camera with the knife. She then jumps, shifting the grate covering the ventilation shaft enough that they can get in. 

“Ventilation shafts?” James says, wincing a little.

“Come on, I’ll get you up,” she says and does, hoisting him up and pulling the crate shut. They’re screwed if this facility has anything like SHIELD’s alarm system, tracking intruders through heat monitors, but nothing she’s seen so far indicates that level of technological prowess.

“I could have just stayed,” he mutters, but he starts crawling. 

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says mildly. 

It’s dark and dirty inside the tunnels but James keeps an eye out through the grates and reports quietly that they definitely rattled someone, as there are multiple patrols out and on the go. Sometimes there’s a sharp upward turn, so they must be moving between floors.

Suddenly James stops. 

“What is it?”

“Weapons storage,” he says quietly. He’s gone tense.

“Bad?”

“We should neutralize what we can,” is his response, and she winces, nodding. They get the vent open and wiggle out onto the floor. Apparently in this part of the facility, the ventilation shafts run along the floors.

She immediately knows what James meant. There are enough guns to outfit a small army here, but that’s not the worrying part.

“This is a WSA,” she says blankly. “I thought all of them were closed.” Weapon Storage Areas were where NATO and the US kept nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

“Obviously this particular group of crazies found one.”

“Obviously,” Natasha says. Nuclear weapons. Great. Begs the question of what they wanted her and James for. Another round of mind-wiping and a kamikaze mission to follow? 

She shakes her head. Enough. “If this is a WSA, there ought to be stairs up and a way out.” There are nearly always direct exits from these facilities. Well-hidden on the outside, but easily accessed from the inside. 

“Good point,” James says, and sure enough, there are stairs leading up to what looks like a control room and there seems to be an exit up there. He looks around. “I wish we could safely torch this.” 

“Actually,” Natasha says. “These bombs aren’t armed, so a fire wouldn’t detonate them. The danger would be the plutonium, which _would_ burn, but plutonium is only dangerous within the immediate vicinity - we’d have to be at least two thousand-five hundred feet away.” She considers it for a second. “But I’m not setting off nuclear bombs.”

“Principles, Tasha?” James is grinning.

“We don’t know where we are,” she says defensively. Fucking morals. It’s all the do-gooders she hangs around with.

“Let’s get out, then,” James says. 

“Hang on,” she says. There’s a computer in the control room. “Let’s get up there; I have to do something before we leave.”

It’s quick work to hack into the security system. James looks at her, mystified. “What the hell, Tasha--” 

“Something new I learned,” she says softly, watching the screen. 

She sends off a message on Tony’s frequency, figuring that to be the quickest (bless Jarvis, really), starts the deletion process of the first two servers she finds that contain research plans (they’ll have back-ups, but it can’t hurt). Then she opens another window, accessing the code for arming the bombs. If she trashes it, they will still be able to be physically armed, but she’s going to effectively prevent all ways of arming them remotely. Hopefully before it comes to physical armament she will get SHIELD in here.

“Oh, hey,” James says, rummaging behind her. “Uniforms. Let’s play dress-up, Tasha.” Good point. 

“Give me a second,” she says. There, that’s done it. She pulls on the clothes Bucky hands her and then they’re out and moving as quickly as they can, which for Bucky isn’t all that quickly at this point. His knee is definitely hurting him. 

It’s a cold night, clear and star-lit, and she’s grateful for the cover of the trees surrounding the area. Fir trees, which means they’ve gone north. The question is how far.

They can’t hear any sound of people being sent out of the facility yet, which is a relief, but they’re still going as fast as they are able, because that might change at any moment.

“Let’s see if we can hitch a ride back to civilization, huh,” James says, leaning on her a little. She nudges him into putting more of his weight on her, and ignores the fact that her own shoulder is hurting, probably wrenched, and not quite up to supporting him. 

“Someone will come along,” she says. 

“Oughta be highly trafficked, this place,” James says. “Pretty landscape and everything. Secret military facilities.” It’s dark and cold, and it mostly reminds Natasha of Siberia. But the stars are nice.

“I like the stars,” she says.

“I know you do,” James says. “As do I, they’re all twinkly and shit--oh, hey, is that a meteorite?”

Natasha looks up, and laughs a little. “No,” she says, and then considers. “Well, I suppose it’s a matter of how you define a meteorite.”

With that, Tony Stark lands in front of them. He hitches up the mask, blinking at them both.

“You rang,” he says, tilting his head at her.

“I did,” she agrees.

“I take it you two didn’t run away together, then,” he says. “That--I was betting on that, the two assassins running away to have tiny deadly babies.”

“I just don’t have any childbearing hips,” James says mournfully. “We had quite the fight when Natasha found that out.”

“I can tell,” Tony says, and the twist around his mouth isn’t one of mirth. “The jet’s a couple of minutes behind, I just got impatient. SHIELD are on their way, too. Something about your location being suspicious, which, I could have told them it’s a WSA, but they ought to keep better track of those.” He means they refused to tell him.

“Fancy that,” Natasha says, smiling at Tony.

“I know, it’s so unexpected and unlike me,” he agrees seriously. “Slow and steady wins the race every time and all that, right Jarvis?”

“Quite right, Mr Stark,” Jarvis says, his disembodied voice somehow more eerie when coming from Tony’s helmet than when it’s coming from the walls of their house.

“Who the fuck is Jarvis?” James says. 

“My--” Tony falters. “This was easier to explain to Steve,” he tells Natasha. 

“I don’t see why;” Natasha says. “Jarvis is Tony’s artificial intelligence,” she says, nudging James. “Like--a brain inside a computer, if you will.”

“If by inside a computer you mean _everywhere_ ,” Tony agrees graciously.

“He wishes,” Natasha says to James. “He wishes his supercomputer could go everywhere.”

“It would be more efficient,” Jarvis says. “But I have enough on my plate as it is, regretfully.”

“Aw, Stark, did your supercomputer just refuse to take over the world for you?” James is grinning. 

“Yes, he does that,” Tony says absently, then looks up and gestures at James and Natasha. “Look, there’s the jet.” 

“Should we back up?” Natasha says, gripping James around the waist to keep him steady. 

“No, they’re landing over there,” Tony says.

It takes about ten seconds after the plane lands for Steve to wrench open the door and come running across the dirt. He skids to a halt in front of them and the look in his eyes is so raw it makes Natasha ache a little. All these feelings. She doesn’t like it.

“You’re--” Steve swallows.

“We’re both fine, Rogers,” James says. “Jesus, don’t fret like that, it’s nothing that another goddamn week in bed won’t fix.” 

“Good,” Steve says. “I--good.” He looks helpless, just standing there, so Natasha nudges James. 

“Possibly a hug might be in order?”

James grins. “You’re gonna have to hold me up,” he tells Steve, and takes a couple of steps, all but falling into Steve’s arms. It’s all very sweet.

Natasha looks beyond them then, because she has her own welcoming committee, apparently. Clint’s eyes are as dark as the sky above them and she bites her lip, because that is not a good look. Phil looks fragile, too. She sort of wishes she could go back and torch the building despite all the plutonium, because no one has the right to make Phil and Clint look like that.

“It never gets easier,” Phil says when he gets close, looking at both her and Clint. “I trust you to always get home safe, but the waiting.” He stops at that, falling silent.

“Clint,” Natasha says, because Clint is struggling with something and she doesn’t know what to say when he looks like that.

 _You can’t leave_ is what she can read from his body language, the way he wants to but doesn’t reach out for her.

She doesn’t tell him she didn’t exactly mean to leave this time, because that’s not the point. “I’ll always tell you,” she promises, and he pulls her close then, Phil bracketing them both.

“We should get back,” Tony says after a while, apologetically. “I left Bruce in charge and Pepper will kill me if he breaks the house again.”

“We can’t have that,” Steve says, and there’s still something choked in his voice, but he sounds and looks much happier.

“Wait, which one is Bruce?” James says.

“Big and green,” Steve says.

“Not most of the time?” Natasha says, making it a question.

“He was a little concerned when you went missing,” Phil says.

Oh. Oops.

“We all were,” Steve says, shifting to lift James into his arms.

“Hang on, hang on,” Tony says, shifting. “Jarvis, you gotta--I need this picture.”

“It’s not going on the internet,” Steve says absently, starting to walk towards the jet. He’s learned quickly, Natasha thinks, smiling to herself.

“No, of course not, what do you take me for,” Tony says, looking innocent. He turns slightly and whispers “I’m framing it though.” 

Clint snorts. “Get me a copy, yeah?” 

“I will end you both,” James promises. 

“Tough talk from the invalid,” Tony says, grinning. 

"I’ll help,” Natasha says, but she smirks at Tony, which she figures he’ll understand means she might leave him alone as long as she gets a copy too.

She’s going to put in on her mantelpiece. She has one, now.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART for "This Time It Wasn't The End" by harborshore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/562929) by [Inner Voice (inner_v0ice)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inner_v0ice/pseuds/Inner%20Voice)




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